Zonaite in Tears of the Kingdom comes from ore deposits in the Depths, and the efficient way to gather it is to find a mine, a concentrated cluster of deposits, rather than picking up whatever you pass. The gap between those two approaches is the difference between an evening’s work and a week of it.
Why You Need It
Zonaite refines into Crystallized Charges, which buy battery upgrades and Zonai devices. Our guide on how to get more battery covers the cost, and it is steep: 100 charges per energy well, and 4,500 to max out entirely.
That number is the reason this is worth optimising rather than doing casually.
Go to the Mines
Scattered deposits exist all over the Depths, but the mines are where the volume is. Reported strong locations include the Great Abandoned Mine, Lindor Canyon Mine, and Daphnes Canyon Mine, which is generally described as the easiest to reach.
Those coordinates circulate widely on community sites and come from player mapping rather than from Nintendo, but the mines themselves are unmistakable once you are in one: walls of ore rather than single nodes.
Mine It Properly
Your tool matters more than anything else here:
- A hammer-type weapon, meaning something heavy fused to a stick, breaks deposits far faster than a sword. Our guide on how to fuse weapons covers making one with a rock or boulder.
- Yunobo’s ability smashes deposits without costing weapon durability at all, which is the reason to have him along on a farming run.
- Bomb Flowers clear entire walls of ore at once. For the large ore faces in the mines, one or two bombs is dramatically faster than swinging.
Light It First
The Depths are pitch dark, and mining in the dark is miserable. Light the Lightroots as you go: each one illuminates a wide area permanently, and a lit mine is a mine you can return to.
Our guide on how to take a picture covers the Purah Pad sensor, which can track ore deposits once they are registered in your Compendium.
Deposits Come Back
Ore deposits respawn on each Blood Moon. That makes a known, lit mine a renewable resource rather than a one-off.
The practical habit is to pin your best mine on the map and return after each Blood Moon, rather than searching for new ground every time.
Large Zonaite
Large Zonaite refines into considerably more charges, and it comes from the Depths’ bigger enemies: Stalnoxes, Froxes and Hinoxes. If you are clearing a mine anyway, the boss-type enemies nearby are worth the fight rather than worth avoiding.
Our guide on Gloom Hands covers the encounter most likely to end a Depths run early, and our guide on how to cook covers the Sundelion meals that counter gloom damage down there.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is the best place to farm Zonaite? The mines in the Depths, which hold walls of ore rather than single deposits.
What is the fastest way to break deposits? Bomb Flowers for large faces, a hammer or Yunobo’s ability for individual nodes.
Do ore deposits respawn? Yes, on each Blood Moon.
Where does Large Zonaite come from? Depths bosses such as Stalnoxes, Froxes and Hinoxes.